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“I’m going.” I hurried to the port side of the ship.
“It won’t allow it,” Gavyn shouted. “This is what happened. I could remain in the sea but could not breach the shore.”
“Not without the bone.” Sander flailed Hesh’s breastbone. “It is the key, remember what the woman said, he was able to step through the wards while his crew was not. The bone and runes are both locator and key to step onto the shore.”
Without a word, I snatched the bone from the prince and leveraged both feet onto the rail. I clung to the rigging, desperately scanning the shoreline.
Gavyn had made it to the water. Livia was no fool. She would’ve hidden. The bells raging over the shore were sounding before we found the isle, and I had a sinking in my gut—they’d found her.
Another cinder stone cracked through night, but fell into the sea, twenty paces from the shore.
Songbird.
Celine handed me her knives, strapping them on my belt, turning over her own cutlass, as though she feared the same—there was a chance I would be depending on blades to fight until I found Livia.
I would. I would not stop until I laid eyes on my queen.
“Bloodsinger.” Valen took hold of the rope next to me. “You get one true chance. You cannot fight this alone.”
“No choice, Earth Bender. Only one goes ashore unless Tavish breaks through.”
“Then, I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll shatter this damn island.”
I could trust her own father to find her, no mistake, but there was no telling if he would have power over this isle. There was no telling if I would have power over the edges of that sea. There was a hum of strange magic here.
At a cove, mottled in trees and wood, a flicker of golden light rose against the shadows. Crimson flames spread in a distinct pattern,winding up the hillside, blazing through shadows like a beast devouring the land.
Air abandoned my lungs when the fire came to an end, burning in a writhing shape across the treetops. The fire spread in the deliberate shape of a writhing sea serpent.
“There! Livia’s there.”
Valen leaned farther over the rail. “How do you know?”
I didn’t respond, didn’t think, before I tightened my grip on the bone key and dove into the sea.
“Godsdammit, Bloodsinger.” Valen’s anger struck my back when I surfaced.
I dove again, demanding the pull of the current to pull me forward. The moment my knees struck ground, I stood and hurried to the shore. My leg protested. I dug a fist into the point of pain and forced the bones to move, forced my legs to quicken my step.
Billows of thick smoke towered over the isle. Lost in the frenzy of fire and ash, clear shouts of men revealed the truth of it—Larsson had a damn force in his command.
“Livia!” I blinked through the sting of smoke, vision blurring. The pathway through the burning trees sloped up for a short distance, then curved back down toward the shore. “Livia, answer me!”
I followed the blaze down the backside of the slope, coughing and retching against the burning air.
My foot slipped on a stone, landing me on flat, pebbled shore. Breaths were a struggle. I hooked my arm around my nose and mouth and limped through the thick smoke.
“Livia.” My voice croaked.
I hurried around a bend on the shoreline, only to meet another slope, and my heart stopped.
There, clinging to the spindly trunk of a small tree, my songbird, dirt-soaked, wild and fierce, halted her descent down the rocky ledge. Eyes like the deepest sea locked with mine for an endless breath.
Pain in my leg forgotten, I sprinted across the shore.
“Erik!” Her cry split me to the marrow of my damn bones. A broken cry, a cry of relief.
Livia used notches in the soil to climb down to the shore, not bothering to wait for her feet to meet pebble before leaping off the edge. She stumbled but caught her stride. Twenty paces, ten. Distance was spent, and I crushed her in my arms. Her body fit against mine, like our flesh and bones yearned to meld together as one.
